I like the way Moonkin plays a lot. The thing that makes playing Moonkin frustrating for me right now is the low levels of haste and crit. Cast time spells take so long to cast, and crit is so low right now we're not getting a ton of starsurge procs, so movement is such a huge penalty for this spec, more than most others. I think it will get better as the expansion moves on and crit levels increase, but the movement penalty is the thing I like the least about the spec. Most else I like, I enjoy the eclipse mechanic very much, we're bursty, but I don't see that as a problem overall really.

Making nature's grace passive would be silly. Why not just remove it and balance around that?

---------- Post added 2012-11-28 at 10:55 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Pascal

Not trying to say anything about you, but balance druids are overall higher than frost DKs on Elegon according to WoL for both difficulties and raid sizes. By ~20k, but, well, what I'm saying is I guess that your anecdotal evidence isn't proof that balance is weak.

This is part of the beauty of it in my eyes. Although I wouldn't say Boomkins are complex at all, far from it.

With experience comes smoothness.

While there's some truth to your comment, it also show's the flaws of the design inherit to the current state of balance.

Unless your raid is 100% flawless in everything, something will always cause an issue forcing you to adjust, and even through that might just be for 1-3 seconds it's highly likely that it happens at least twice on a fight, and unlike every other caster class.., balance druids are heavily punished in output in those minor sequences.

It's easily fixed if they shifted some of the procc's to passive as OP said.

Making nature's grace passive would be silly. Why not just remove it and balance around that?

---------- Post added 2012-11-28 at 10:55 PM ----------

Looking at the top logs which are by definition the greatest outliers is not a valid way to determine anything regarding dps, including comparing two specs on a fight.

I'm not saying that balance druids are fine because they are better than frost DKs on Elegon. I was, and ONLY was, showing the poster of the comment I quoted that his anecdote about his personal experience with balance and frost on Elegon is meaningless.

And, not to instigate, but what exactly about the top 200 parses of a spec makes them all outliers? The top 200 players of a certain specc could easily be considered a valid determination of the general accepted strength of that spec. I wouldn't expect the top 200 players of a certain class or spec to not be very good at utilizing their class to its fullest extent.

I'm not saying that balance druids are fine because they are better than frost DKs on Elegon. I was, and ONLY was, showing the poster of the comment I quoted that his anecdote about his personal experience with balance and frost on Elegon is meaningless.

And, not to instigate, but what exactly about the top 200 parses of a spec makes them all outliers? The top 200 players of a certain specc could easily be considered a valid determination of the general accepted strength of that spec. I wouldn't expect the top 200 players of a certain class or spec to not be very good at utilizing their class to its fullest extent.

Because utilizing to the fullest extent is not the mean, which is a better measure of balance. They are the top which are the highest away from the mean with documentation, making them outliers. The game isn't balanced around the top 200 parses and never will be.

Because utilizing to the fullest extent is not the mean, which is a better measure of balance. They are the top which are the highest away from the mean with documentation, making them outliers. The game isn't balanced around the top 200 parses and never will be.

Fair enough. They are surely outliers as per definition. It's just that to say they are not a valid way to determine anything regarding DPS is a little extreme as far as I'm concerned. If all of the best players of one specc are much better than all of the best players of another specc, that information, to me, is not worthless. If all of the best players of one spec are having particular difficulty matching up to other speccs on a particular fight, that information, to me, is not worthless.

To completely disregard them for any sort of analyzing or research is just a little off. If they really were so worthless, I wouldn't imagine that so many people would take the time and effort to create entire websites and devote so much time to theorycrafting off them.

Now that I think about it, I kind of don't understand the argument about Nature's Grace. You have a lot of freedom as far as refreshing dots. If you are doing so much movement that you don't have time to travel the eclipse bar for two whole sets of dots it seems like everyone else would be severely penalized as well.

Even though I complained about it, I don't like the idea of moving procs/CDs to passive buffs (and tbh, we already have options for that with talents). I really like the eclipse mechanic, that playing well requires knowing what eclipse you have to be in 2 minutes from now and how to optimize your path there. In cata that meant how to make sure you were in solar at the right time, but having a big burst feels way more fun, when it works. Mastering that will feel fun too. :P

Not trying to say anything about you, but balance druids are overall higher than frost DKs on Elegon according to WoL for both difficulties and raid sizes. By ~20k, but, well, what I'm saying is I guess that your anecdotal evidence isn't proof that balance is weak.

I played a moonkin since wrath given my moonkin experience in MoP is limited. The rotation is a lot more fun than in wrath =S
The spam one ability and hope for a proc wasn't fun. But I am wondering what players think about removing the uneclipsed state? Since wrath a lot of the changes to eclipse has been to smooth out the roller coaster dps moonkin's experience and reduce the moonkin's movement penalty. I am not so sure nature's grace is the problem but balancing between eclipse states might even things out a bit.

I played a moonkin since wrath given my moonkin experience in MoP is limited. The rotation is a lot more fun than in wrath =S
The spam one ability and hope for a proc wasn't fun. But I am wondering what players think about removing the uneclipsed state? Since wrath a lot of the changes to eclipse has been to smooth out the roller coaster dps moonkin's experience and reduce the moonkin's movement penalty. I am not so sure nature's grace is the problem but balancing between eclipse states might even things out a bit.

I think always doubling energy generation outside of eclipse states was a good start. It would require a lot of reworking to completely remove the non-eclipsed part of our damage. It also would seem a bit weird to consider us as "always being in eclipse."

Boomkin is all about momentum , i actually see balance being extremely strong as the expansion goes on just because how strong our secondary stats are.

Of course you want buffs when your crit and haste are not that great and you're playing average, but that would break moonkins at the next tiers when we are rocking 30%+ crit and SS are proc'n like crazy.

With the way our mechanics work id be worried about getting nerfed later on, we are like the warriors of Wrath in my eyes.

Indeed, i was very frustrated in beginning of the tier with our performance, but because of our great scaling with secondary stats now that i have gear the rotation is much smoother and damage much much higher

Actually Starfall, a spell active for 10 sec every 50ish does more damge than Wrath, a spell we cast half the time.
I can't imagine our damage being lower than that.

The buffs i'd like to make us smoother are:

Give Incarnation something to make it useful even out of eclipse, i've never seen a 3min cd that is completely useless for half the time. FFS it has 3 minutes of cooldown!!

Starsurge: whenever we have many dots up, or a lucky series of procs if we are casting Wraths we can use almost all the Shootings Stars procs, but if we are in lunar we have to either continue to cast Starfire and hope that the Shooting Stars proc mid cast is the only one and we didn't waste procs by not instantly using the one that popped up.
Or not cast Starfire at all and hope to get many Shooting Stars procs...

Blizz should make the SS proc a stackable buff this way if we get more than one proc we don't waste it because we were casting a sloooooow spell like starfire.

They should remove the restriction on Starsurge that prevent us from casing it if another one is still flying.
It's a rule that can be ignored by standing near the target to reduce flight time and it's already on the GCD by itself (i believe shaman's instant Lavaburst are not on the GCD)

Finally they should bump Hurricane damage a little bit and Wrath damage by a ton.

Blizz should make the SS proc a stackable buff this way if we get more than one proc we don't waste it because we were casting a sloooooow spell like starfire.

They should remove the restriction on Starsurge that prevent us from casing it if another one is still flying.

These are both very good ideas. The only downside to the first one, is that they may refuse to implement it because of PvP. But it's very similar to what they did with Hand of Gul'dan for MoP - but then again, demo locks have probably the best burst in PvP right now, which is why people use them in 3s.

With appropriate restrictions, like small stack size, or short duration - it may be viable. Also, I don't think moonkins are super popular in PvP right now anyway.

These are both very good ideas. The only downside to the first one, is that they may refuse to implement it because of PvP. But it's very similar to what they did with Hand of Gul'dan for MoP - but then again, demo locks have probably the best burst in PvP right now, which is why people use them in 3s.

With appropriate restrictions, like small stack size, or short duration - it may be viable. Also, I don't think moonkins are super popular in PvP right now anyway.

They should take it off the GCD like lavaburst, not stack it, or in pvp you would fight till you have 5 stacks or so, then drill them one after another into a guy and totally destroy him. (which is very dissimilar to getting lucky and sending 5 his way after a multi dot scenario, cause that is LUCK not preplanned)

---------- Post added 2012-11-30 at 05:05 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Nephyron

Give Incarnation something to make it useful even out of eclipse, i've never seen a 3min cd that is completely useless for half the time. FFS it has 3 minutes of cooldown!!

We are currently < very good > on certain situations, mainly multi target fights like Amber Shaper, Elegon, Will of the Emperor or Sha of Fear. However, to balance it out, we have to be lacking on other fields, mostly single target or high movement fights. The DPS loss on moving situations is just abhorrent and much more penalizing then other classes.

For example, in a raid situation. Imperial Vizier or Blade Lord whats'his'name are just horrible. The absolutely ridiculous Wrath damage, or the insanely long cast time of Starfire's just penalize us too much. It's horrendous.

Another example is the Brawl'gar Arena fights, the Rank 8 ones. 3 of them demand constant move or insta-death... and it's just impossible to do so with the current situation (unless you completely overgear and trivialize it). The 'mechanical' fight with the constant laser beams\orbs running around, or the t-rex riding a shark with the laser beams and the bombardment make it impossible to dish out any damage... wrath damage is laughable and you can't really cast a decent amount of starfires with the movement demand... it's horrendous. It is however a 'niche' feature, so i'm not really bothered, but just another example on how the class lacks.

Oh, and for the love of Thrall, give us some sort of Execute ability... Revamp Insect Swarm as a <20% cast only, make both dots a higher chance of critting, or simply make starsurges guaranteed crits or something... Our initial burst is amazing, multi dotting is good... but the rest, argh. Shrooms? Useless. Hurricane? Vastly inferior to every other class's AoE.... bleh.

I levelled as moonkin, started to raid as moonkin then quickly stopped, just too much for my little brain. On my shaman I have so little to worry about that good dsp is just natural, with boomkins Im just constantly getting confused as to what Im doing next, its mainly down to my abilities but its such a clunky dps spec that I quickly changed to guardian. I certainly like some of the changes noted here, and I imagine with the 4pc life gets a lot easier, but to design a rotation around a 4pc is just not for me.

It also would seem a bit weird to consider us as "always being in eclipse."

I think it seems weird cause we just always had an uneclipsed state but it really is a hold over from BC/Wrath when we prayed for procs. When the "fun" in the rotation was "OMG a proc!". The uneclipse state doesn't serve that function as the rotation is a lot less random than it used to be. I do think balancing a two state dps stance (lunar/solar) will be easier than balancing a three state (lunar/solar/uneclipsed).